“I lost my inhaler,” he said.
“That’s okay, it doesn’t matter,” she said, not releasing him. “We’ll go. We’ll go to the hospital.”
He tensed up. “Mom, I just want to go home.”
“We’ll drive you,” Lacey’s dad said, approaching and touching Javi’s mom’s arm. “I’m taking the girls, just to be on the safe side. Come on. I’ll drive.”
The nearest hospital was nearly an hour away. Javi didn’t think he was going to hold up another hour. He just wanted to go home and curl up in his bed and pretend this was all a bad dream.
But Mr. Davila was prodding, and his mom was pushing, and he just didn’t have any fight left in him.
Once he was closed in the back seat of Mr. Davila’s SUV, he looked back out at the water, at the rescue efforts going on. A helicopter hovering over a copse of mesquite trees, probably the same trees where he’d heard Britt. And farther down, he saw the bus, on its side, mostly submerged, the water flowing around it, and a firetruck pulled up along the bank beside it.
God, who was still in there? Had Austin gotten out? Con’s little sister? Bridget? He wanted to ask, but he didn’t really want the answers. Poppy reached over and took his hand as Lacey’s dad pulled away from the scene.
* * *
Austin survived,but his mother didn’t. Con survived, but his sister didn’t. And Bridget Tippler, whose mom owned the diner in town, she didn’t make it either. Neither Bridget nor Claudia had even gotten out of the bus.
That Austin had survived was a miracle.
But he was alone now. Javi’s mom had prompted him, as soon as she learned of his mother’s fate, to drive her over to the small little house where Austin and his mom had lived to talk to him. The place looked so weird without the bus parked in the long shady driveway.
Javi was still moving pretty slow. He’d broken two ribs and chipped a vertebrae, but the doctors just bound him up and warned him not to exert himself too much. They’d given him some pain medication, which was the only way he was able to sleep, and even those pills didn’t prevent the nightmares.
But his nightmares went away when he woke up. Austin’s didn’t.
Javi accompanied his mom to the front door and they knocked, feeling like even ringing the bell was too intrusive. But Austin didn’t answer the door.
Javi couldn’t blame him. His mom was catching all the blame for the accident, and Austin wasn’t seeing the best of their small town. Two girls had died, and their parents were distraught, and said things they didn’t mean. Austin had lost his mom and didn’t need to hear that she could be the reason those girls were dead.
When Austin didn’t answer the door, Javi flipped open the new phone his mom had given him. He had tried to protest that she didn’t need to spend the money, but she was so happy he was safe, she would have done anything for him. He vowed he was going to get a summer job, if he could find one, to help her out. Maybe Con’s dad would hire him to work on the ranch, once his ribs healed.
“Austin, it’s me, Javi,” he said when the call went to voicemail. “I’m at the door. My mom is here. She wants to talk to you.” He disconnected and put the phone in the front pocket of his shorts, then shrugged at his mom. He didn’t know if Austin would listen to the message, if he’d even recognize the new number, even though Javi had texted him from it several times the past few days, with no response.
But then the door opened, and Austin stood there silently, looking like a scarecrow. He’d always be thin, but now he looked—shriveled. Javi’s mom made an exclamation and surged forward to wrap him in her arms, holding onto him and murmuring comforting words in Spanish that Javi didn’t think Austin knew.
After a moment of holding himself stiffly, Austin wrapped his arms around her, too, and buried his face against her shoulder. Javi didn’t have to see his shaking shoulders to know his best friend was sobbing.
When Austin finally finished, all the while with Javi’s mom stroking his hair, he lifted his head and released Mrs. Saldivar.
But she didn’t release him. She held onto his hand and started to pull him toward the door. “You come home with us. It’s not good for you to stay here by yourself.” She waved toward the house.
The dark, quiet house.
“You are a brother to Javier. You come stay with us until it is time for you to go to school.”
Austin had been accepted to Baylor in pre-med, and would start in August. The town was paying for his college. In return, he’d come back here to Broken Wheel and serve as the town doctor for a few years. Javi wasn’t sure of the terms, but a contract was in place. He was pretty sure the town would have broken it after the bus accident, if they could have.
Austin’s face, tear-streaked, tightened at the invitation. Javi thought he recognized something like longing in his best friend’s face, but Austin shook his head.
“I can’t. I have to stay here.”
“You don’t. You don’t have to stay here. You stay with us, and you can come back here, to do what you need to do.” She looked past him into the messy house, the one he was going to have to sell before he left.
But even as Mrs. Saldivar spoke, Austin was shaking his head. “No, ma’am, thank you. I do appreciate it, and I appreciate the support. But this is my home, for another few months. The home she got for me.”
Javi saw his mom open her mouth to argue, to try to convince him, but she closed her mouth instead and nodded, her hand falling away from his arm.
